Yes­ter­day, my col­league, se­nior mul­ti­me­dia busi­ness re­porter An­drea Perez-Sobers, wrote the lead sto­ry for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Guardian un­der the head­line ‘Hilton warns of Sep­tem­ber 18 ex­it as lease arrange­ment yet to be fi­nalised.’ The Hilton’s dead­line for the con­clu­sion of the ne­go­ti­a­tions to ex­tend the lease is im­por­tant, news­wor­thy, and con­se­quen­tial be­cause the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre has been an im­por­tant part of T&T’s post-In­de­pen­dence his­to­ry as the coun­try’s first ma­jor ho­tel with an in­ter­na­tion­al brand.

The ho­tel, which was com­plet­ed in 1962 just be­fore this coun­try’s In­de­pen­dence, was for decades its pre­mier ho­tel and the place where most of the ma­jor con­fer­ences, meet­ings and cel­e­bra­tions were held.

Hilton Trinidad was al­so the place where al­most all of the busi­ness­peo­ple who came to Trinidad would au­to­mat­i­cal­ly book, be­cause of its brand, stan­dards and its lo­ca­tion close to gov­ern­ment of­fices in down­town Port-of-Spain and with­in 40 min­utes of the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

In a re­al sense, Hilton Trinidad’s de­cline be­gan when the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad was opened in Jan­u­ary 2008, as it was even clos­er to T&T’s cen­tral busi­ness dis­trict and it has all of the ser­vices that vis­i­tors want and need.

Hilton Trinidad is owned on be­half of the state by Evolv­ing Tec­Knolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment (eTecK), while Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad is owned on be­half of the state by the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UDe­COTT). So, al­though both prop­er­ties are owned by the 100 per cent state-owned com­pa­nies, they are both op­er­at­ed by huge, multi­na­tion­al Amer­i­can ho­tel com­pa­nies.

In a for­mal no­ti­fi­ca­tion to the sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union, Joanne Ogeer, dat­ed Au­gust 4, Hilton In­ter­na­tion­al Trinidad wrote that with­out a fi­nal agree­ment with eTecK, it will not be able to con­tin­ue em­ploy­ing the ho­tel per­son­nel af­ter Sep­tem­ber 18.

“Un­der the terms of the lease, up­on its ex­pi­ra­tion, eTecK is re­quired to take over and dis­charge in full all oblig­a­tions aris­ing un­der con­tracts of em­ploy­ment en­tered in­to by Hilton in re­spect of em­ploy­ees at the ho­tel. Ac­cord­ing­ly, it is Hilton’s un­der­stand­ing that eTeck will as­sume re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for all team mem­bers em­ploy­ment and re­lat­ed oblig­a­tions af­ter Sep­tem­ber 18.

“How­ev­er, we can­not say with cer­tain­ty what eTecK will do. If eTeck is un­able or un­will­ing to con­tin­ue op­er­a­tions of the ho­tel fol­low­ing the ex­pi­ra­tion of the lease, then the ho­tel may close fol­low­ing the ex­pi­ra­tion of the lease on Sep­tem­ber 18,” the com­pa­ny said.

In my view, that let­ter to the trade union rep­re­sent­ing a ma­jor­i­ty of Hilton Trinidad’s em­ploy­ees, makes clear that if the in­ter­na­tion­al ho­tel chain does not have an ac­cept­able agree­ment with the Gov­ern­ment by Sep­tem­ber 18, it is go­ing to with­draw from its man­age­ment of the ho­tel and hand the keys to the prop­er­ty over to its land­lord, eTecK.

In one sense, yes­ter­day’s sto­ry was a sur­prise be­cause on Sun­day, March 22, 2026, Guardian Me­dia se­nior re­porter on the in­ves­ti­ga­tions desk, Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les, penned a 1,725-word sto­ry head­lined ‘Hilton con­sid­ers ex­it from Trinidad,’ which de­tailed many of the is­sues that, one as­sumes, are at the heart of Hilton In­ter­na­tion­al’s fi­nal dead­line to the Gov­ern­ment.

Those is­sues in­clude the Gov­ern­ment’s fail­ure to un­der­take ex­ten­sive cap­i­tal up­grades re­quired to main­tain the fa­cil­i­ty to Hilton’s in­ter­na­tion­al op­er­at­ing stan­dards. Ac­cord­ing to the re­port­ing by Ms Gon­za­les in March this year, Hilton is now man­ag­ing the prop­er­ty in St Ann’s by way of a se­ries of short-term agree­ments. That fol­lows the ex­pi­ra­tion of a 20-year lease op­er­a­tor­ship agree­ment dat­ed Oc­to­ber 1, 2003, which would have end­ed on Sep­tem­ber 30, 2023. Un­der that agree­ment, eTecK re­tained re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture and ma­jor struc­tur­al works.

In an ar­ti­cle pub­lished on April 26, 2026, head­lined ‘Hilton gives Govt three-month ex­ten­sion,’ Ms Gon­za­les quot­ed from an in­ter­nal memo emailed to Hilton Trinidad ex­ec­u­tives by the ho­tel’s gen­er­al man­ag­er, Olivi­er Mau­maire, that the agree­ment gov­ern­ing the man­age­ment and op­er­a­tion of Hilton Trinidad was ex­tend­ed for three months ef­fec­tive April 16, 2026. That means the agree­ment would have ex­pired mid-Ju­ly and would have been re­placed by the agree­ment that ends on Sep­tem­ber 18.

In short, the Gov­ern­ment knew the im­por­tance to the pub­lic of the fu­ture of Hilton in Trinidad.

In a state­ment is­sued on Au­gust 4, eTecK said the ne­go­ti­a­tions to ar­rive at a new lease agree­ment “re­main ac­tive and con­struc­tive and that no de­ci­sion has been tak­en by eTecK or the Gov­ern­ment to per­ma­nent­ly dis­con­tin­ue the op­er­a­tions of the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre.”

It is use­ful to note that on March 24, eTecK is­sued a news re­lease out­lin­ing that the Gov­ern­ment had “of­fi­cial­ly tran­si­tioned eTecK to the Min­istry of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs” and that the com­pa­ny’s new line Min­is­ter was Sad­dam Ho­sein.

It is al­so note­wor­thy, I be­lieve, that Mr Ho­sein is the line min­is­ter for Land­mark­TT Prop­er­ties, the com­pa­ny that award­ed a con­tract worth $129,283,650 to an en­ter­prise named Mooti­lal Ramhit & Sons Con­tract­ing on April 17. That con­tract was for the pro­vi­sion of de­sign-build-fi­nance ser­vices for the con­struc­tion of sin­gle-fam­i­ly homes and du­plex­es at the Al­lam­by res­i­den­tial de­vel­op­ment in Corinth, San Fer­nan­do.

The award to Mooti­lal Ramhit and Sons was among the first con­tracts award­ed by the land man­age­ment agency, which was es­tab­lished this year.

The con­tract be­tween Land­mark­TT Prop­er­ties and Mooti­lal Ramhit and Sons Con­tract­ing has not been sus­pend­ed but is said to be un­der “in­tense scruti­ny” by the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR). But the OPR did for­mal­ly di­rect the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) to pause (mean­ing sus­pend) the award of the $3.4 bil­lion in hous­ing con­tracts to 11 con­trac­tors on April 14. That arrange­ment was sub­se­quent­ly can­celled by the Min­istry of Hous­ing.

The largest pro­posed re­cip­i­ent of the HDC’s $3.4 bil­lion in con­tracts was Mooti­lal Ramhit and Sons Con­tract­ing, which would have re­ceived a con­tract worth $1 bil­lion to build 1,000 hous­ing units, un­der the de­sign-build-fi­nance mod­el.

Ques­tions

* If eTecK is un­able or un­will­ing to be­gin the man­age­ment and op­er­a­tion of Hilton Trinidad on Sep­tem­ber 18, would the Gov­ern­ment be pre­pared to al­low the icon­ic ho­tel to close on that day?

* If the Gov­ern­ment is pre­pared to al­low the ho­tel to close, would it be pre­pared to sell the prop­er­ty “as is” to the high­est bid­der?

* If the Gov­ern­ment is pre­pared to sell Hilton Trinidad, would Mooti­lal Ramhit and Sons be pre­pared to en­ter a fair, trans­par­ent and ro­bust com­pe­ti­tion to ac­quire the ho­tel, giv­en the fact that the com­pa­ny must have bankers who are pre­pared to fund its con­struc­tion projects to the tune of hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars?

* Is it a co­in­ci­dence that First Cit­i­zens Group CEO, Ja­son Julien, an­nounced his res­ig­na­tion, ef­fec­tive Au­gust 31, and is go­ing to work with a Nas­daq-list­ed com­pa­ny, which is not in com­pe­ti­tion with one of the lo­cal fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions?

* Would the Gov­ern­ment be pre­pared to al­low the re­trench­ment of an es­ti­mat­ed 300 work­ers, at a time when the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice has re­port­ed an in­crease in the num­ber of peo­ple with­out jobs?

* Is what Hilton In­ter­na­tion­al is re­quest­ing of the Gov­ern­ment—which has to be fo­cussed on eTecK spend­ing the mon­ey re­quired to un­der­take the nec­es­sary cap­i­tal up­grades—un­usu­al or un­af­forad­able?

* What is the Gov­ern­ment’s plans for the tourism sec­tor in Trindad?